Gentlemen of the press you are welcome to this press conference on the state of some abandoned projects reported in the month of May, 2019.

Project development particularly infrastructural projects are intended to provide new products and essential services such as education, health, portable drinking water etc. to the community and at the time, promote the beauty of the environment. Unfortunately, many of these projects fall in the trap of been abandoned by the either the initiators of the projects or by their successors, either for lack of political will or corruptions related activities.

This trend is posing serious challenge to the development of the country and economic growth and all these are to the detriment of the common citizens in the country.

You may recall that for about a year now CITAD with support from MacArthur foundation as part of its effort to reduce the number of these abandoned projects in the country has been tracking and following up abandoned projects in Nigeria, so as to draw the attention of the stakeholders to the project and also advocate for its completion.

One of the strategies that CITAD adopt in getting information about some public abandoned projects in the country, we initiated abandoned projects reporting competition. The participants in this competition source abandoned projects in their communities or anywhere and make a comprehensive report on the projects, including its location, awarding agency, the contracting company where available, level of the projects and the period within which the project was abandoned.

When these reports are sent to our websites, some independent judges screen the reports and choose the best six out of all per session and subject these six to voting by the general public using our social media platforms and the website. The three competitors with the highest votes are selected and consider for prizes.

It is in this development, that we invited you today to witness yet another prizes presentation for the winners of these prizes in the competition for the month of May, 2019.

Gentlemen of the press let me present to you these winners as:

1. Surraya Jamilu from Yobe state University, who reported on the Jan Bulo 1^st Gate, in Kano that was abandoned since the time the Kano former Deputy Governor Prof. Hafizu Abubakar resigned from the deputy governorship.
2. Aisha Inuwa Idris: from School of Health Technology, Kano who reported on the abandoned construction work of Yahaya Gusau which was abandoned since 2015.
3. Idris Nuhu Gaya: from University of Ibadan who reported on abandoned on Teachers’ lodge in Government Tahfizul Quran Secondary School, in Gaya.

Another strategy is on outsourcing innovative ideas from students of tertiary institutions on how to tackle corruptions in Nigeria. In the month of May the topic on which essays were written was “How to tackle corruption in the judiciary.” After the compilation and voting the following students become victorious

1. Layusa Jafar Ahmed from National Open University, Lagos Study Centre who won the first position
2. Ruqayya Ibrahim From Federal College Education, Gumel second position
3. Abdullahi Sulaiman Saleh from Bauchi State University, Gadau third position

Thank you

Isah Garba

Senior Programmes officers,

CITAD

08064867312